Sex, blackmail, theft, treachery, murder and... scholarship? Online satirical novel, launched today, skewers political correctness, university life, student activism, and the cult of celebrity

From the battlegrounds of World War II to Redfern University's more-than-a-little-cracked ivory towers, it's all part of the riotous satire Higher Learning, by Marianne Shapiro. Everything's fair game for the author's sharp pen: political correctness, faculty relations, student activism, the cult of celebrity and contemporary poetry, just for starters. Higher Learning is a page-clicker of an ebook, and it's online now at www.higherlearninganovel.com for free and uproarious reading!

(PRWEB) April 5, 2004--In the lively tradition of Tom Wolfes The Bonfire of the Vanities and David Lodges Small World and Changing Places, Marianne Shapiros Higher Learning sends-up sex, blackmail, theft, treachery, political correctness, murder mysteries and scholarship.

The novel has been published online as an ebook, and is available free at http://www.higherlearninganovel.com. Carol Pentleton (www.thenewplace.com) designed the ebook.

Set at Ivy League Redfern University," the story turns on the murder of a student, Selena Fenn, whose grandfather is a prominent member of the Redfern Board of Trustees. Chief suspects are assorted lunatic Redfern faculty members; Keith Chambers, the special assistant to Redfern's president, Grigol ("Chuck") Chavadze; and Selena's lesbian roommate, Hilary Slocombe.

As two harried police detectives struggle to cut through University red tape and duplicity to solve the murder, the chaos is amplified by purloined letters, incriminating papers dating back to World War II, a flourishing on-campus prostitution ring, faculty intrigue, the establishment of a politically correct curriculum and a list of Forbidden Words. At stake are millions of dollars, control of a new campus Center, and the reputations of high-powered campus movers-and-shakers.

The author, Marianne Shapiro (née Goldner) was born on April 14, 1940, in Budapest (Hungary), and immigrated to the United States at the age of 3. She attended New York public schools in Manhattan, including the High School of Music and Art, and graduated from Barnard College. She was a Fulbright student at the Universities of Rome and Florence and received graduate degrees from Harvard and Columbia University.

Besides her extensive published scholarship in medieval, Renaissance, and comparative literature, Marianne Shapiro was an accomplished classical pianist and linguist (French, Italian, Latin, Old Provençal, German, Russian) and had a detailed knowledge of art history, particularly the European Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Despite this unusual versatility--and perhaps because of it--she was unable to find a permanent position in the academic world and was forced to migrate from one temporary job to another over the entire 35-year span of her professional life.

After months of the most cruel and horrible suffering, Marianne Shapiro died of sarcoma in Manchester Center, Vermont, on June 3, 2003. Her husband, Michael, her daughter, Abigail, and her granddaughter, Emma Lydia, survive her.